Chabert Hallo-Watch: Haul Out The Halloween (2025)

Watched: 10/12/2025

Format:  Hallmark+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Maclain Nelson

Job: Copywriter/ Children's Book Author

Location of story:  Evergreen Lane - which I think is in Salt Lake City

new skill:  it's an old skill remembered - how to draw and write kid's books

Man:  Wes Brown

Job of Man:  Architect

Goes to/ Returns to:  stays in same place (this is the 3rd installment)

Event:  Halloween street fair

Food:  Cookies

Well, Ms. Lacey Chabert has released a new movie upon the Hallmark channel, and so we're back!

This is the third installment in the Haul Out the Holly Saga, a movie series which is about people who are absolutely nuts for holidays, their HOA and rules.  We've abandoned Christmas for Halloween this go-round, which - given the first movies are about going over the top with traditions - seems appropriate.  

This is, I should mention, a wacky comedy series with everything about the 'burbs heightened and zany, so don't take it too seriously.  It's a departure from Hallmark's usual "the characters are all smiling to let you know a joke happened" style of comedy, and, instead, works more like an 00's-era comedy - complete with joke-every-15-second pop culture referencing and a rap by Octogenarians.  

Happy Birthday, Lacey Chabert

those aren't balloons, they're bubbles of Hubba Bubba

Well, we watched 70-something Lacey Chabert movies in the last year, so we'd be remiss not giving a birthday shoutout to the Hallmark Queen of Christmas.  

As of yesterday, we've also now seen all of Chabert's reality show, "Celebrations".*  And, I guess, Chabert's holiday collection has now dropped at Hallmark.com.   So I guess make Chabert happy and line her pockets by buying some stuff.

*It was a slow weekend as Jamie was not feeling great. 

Hallmark Christmas Movie Schedule 2025 Drops

Ms. Chabert, set to grace Christmas screens this Holiday season, seen here having pulled this man's finger

Well, Hallmark has released their schedule for the Christmas movies coming in 2025.  Despite the fact it's September and in the 90's where I live, over in Hallmark HQ, it might as well be time to rock around the Christmas tree.

Hallmark isn't completely ignoring the rest of the year.  They're currently showing movies with a fall theme on the channels (although it's not officially autumn until September 22nd).  And they're even getting spooky this year as Ms. Chabert and Hallmark stalwart Wes Brown will appear in the Halloween themed third chapter in the "Haul Out the Holly" saga.  

Meanwhile, Hallmark ornaments are coming in waves for 2025, with an official Lacey Chabert ornament coming in October.  (I am well aware of the Superman ornament, thanks).  

Here's the Hallmark checklist of new content:

Chabert Whoops Watch: The Sweetest Christmas (2017)

Watched:  06/21/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

Job: Receptionist/ Would-Be Baker

Location of story:  Helen, Georgia (which is apparently a real place themed like a German village?)

new skill:  ruining two men's lives

Man:  Lea Coco (no, really)

Job of Man:  Italian Restauranteur

Goes to/ Returns to:  has returned home

Event:  National Gingerbread Competition

Food:  oh, Gingerbread, man.  So much Gingerbread.

Well, whoops.  

I thought I'd watched this one, but... and follow me here... I found out through an odd way that I had *not* watched it.  I had confused a Valentine's movie about chocolate with The Sweetest Christmas (2017) while managing the Chabert-a-Tron 3000 and checked it off.

Hey, moron... how did you puzzle that one out?  you may be asking yourself.  

ChabertQuest 2025: I Have Watched 72 Lacey Chabert Movies since November

I am full of bad ideas.  

Once, I went vegetarian for a full year just to prove that I could do it (it was a disaster, but short being force fed sausage pizza at a work meeting, I remained vegetarian all year).  

I have decided to own every issue of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen and Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane.  

To what end do I do these things?  I do not know.

But, worse, sometimes someone else's bad ideas will land in my head, and I'll think "yes, I will do that thing", especially if it's absolutely pointless. 

This post marks the end of ChabertQuest2025.  It began as a germ of an idea that became a marathon.  A Chabert-a-thon, if you will.  And now I can put down my remote and put away my Christmas ornaments.  We have done the thing we set out to do.

Some numbers:

• As of this writing, Lacey Chabert has 183 IMDB entries
• Of these credits, she has 87 live action feature films / TV films listed
• Of those, I was unable to locate 14, as they are not streaming or otherwise readily available.
• I refused to rewatch one of the movies because I'd already seen it and had a blog post about it
• Thus, since the holiday movie season began in November 2024, I have watched 72 separate movies in which Lacey Chabert appears.

Who we are and how we came to be

Last Christmas, rather than taking in a medley of new and classic Holiday movies as we usually do, we thought "we're doing all Hallmark."  After all, we've seen all of the usual Christmas films a few dozen times.  I can keep White Christmas a bit fresher if I don't sit through it every year.  So we just leaned into what's usually something we'd normally catch pieces of, but don't always watch all the way through.  

By the end of the holidays, I'd watched 9 Lacey Chabert holiday movies.  

Why Chabert for my Christmas merriment?  Well, not all Hallmark stars are of the same caliber.  

Sorry, other actors.  It's true.*  There is absolutely a Hallmark talent pool of leads who get re-cast, over and over, and here at The Signal Watch, Lacey Chabert is considered better at the acting and festive thing than the average Hallmark bear. If you're going to watch one of these movies, might as well watch one that's not a dud.

Randy, who is not good for me, upon reviewing my Holiday movie post from 2024 said "now you should watch every Lacey Chabert movie".  And I was like "ha ha.   That's insane."  

And then I was like:  ha ha... that is insane....  maybe so insane it just might....

And here we are.

Who is Lacey Chabert?

Chabert Watch: Gypsy (1993)

Midler took center stage?  Whaaaaat....?

Watched:  06/13/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Emile Ardolino

Everything's coming up Chabert!

So, I'd never seen Gypsy before in any form.  A snip of the Natalie Wood version was on once and we agreed we'd watch the full thing at some point and... we did not.

This film, Gypsy (1993), was a TV movie that aired in December of my Freshman year of college, so I am not shocked I was unaware of it existing.  All I really knew about Gypsy was:

1. Jamie once played a small part in a community theatre version of the play 
2. Broadway queen Audra McDonald is currently receiving rave reviews for her portrayal of Momma Rose.  
3. It's sort of about the ultimate stage mom
4. It's the origin story of a real life stripper turned writer turned pop figure,  Gypsy Rose Lee, who was a fixture in American culture from the 30's to the 60's

This TV movie was an adaptation of a Stephen Sondheim musical of the same name, which was originally on Broadway starting in the late 1950's and ran for some time.  The musical, in turn, was based on Lee's own memoirs, which had been a popular book.

Chabert Watch: Daddy Day Care (2003)

Watched:  06/11/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steve Carr

Sometimes coming into a movie and seeing it has an extraordinarily low rating sets you up for success.  Daddy Day Care (2003) has a 39 on Metacritic* and a Critics score at RT of 27%.  

Honestly, I thought it was fine.  Not good, but fine.  

It knew what it was - an excuse for kids to be cute and throw in some wholesome jokes.  It was clearly intended to be a family movie, and so I can see how critics decided this was bad, hoping for the Eddie Murphy of the 80's and 90's.  And I don't automatically give Eddie Murphy a pass.  I think I declared Candy Cane Lane the worst movie of 2023.  But as a family movie based on its own merits, sure.  Daddy Day Care (2003) is.. fine.  (I also have seen so many awful movies of late, this feels like Casablanca by comparison)

The movie stars Murphy as a guy trying to run a health food team within a processed food company, who loses his job when his project "Veggie-O's Cereal" bombs.  Coming with him is his side-kick, Jeff Garlin.  They recruit their former mail-boy, Steve Zahn, to work with the kids.  Regina King plays Murphy's wife, who has just started working as an attorney.  Anjelica Huston plays the head of a school/ daycare that's run like an intense prep academy.  Lacey Chabert plays her assistant.  Jonathan Katz plays a City employee keeping tabs on the daycare.  Laura Kightlinger is in there.  Kevin Nealon.  Siobhan Fallon Hogan.  And a very small Elle Fanning is one of the kids.

Chabert Watch: Christmas in Rome (2019)

Watched:  06/09/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  1.5

Director:  Ernie Barbarash 

Job: Tour Guide

Location of story:  Hallmark Rome

new skill:  Not going off the rails

Man:  Sam Page

Job of Man:  Business Man

Goes to/ Returns to:  Man goes to Rome

Event:  Business Deal

Food:  a bunch of Italian stuff I can't spell and/ or remember

So.  (deep breath)  I believe this is both the last Lacey Chabert Hallmark movie and last Chabert Christmas movie I have to watch during ChabertQuest 2025.  

Please clap.

If you haven't been around, we're nearing the end of watching every live-action movie in which Lacey Chabert appears that we could get legitimate access to.  And we're almost done.  It started in November by accident, became intentional in January, and it has been a journey.  

One of my self-imposed rules was that if I had already seen a movie and written it up, I was allowed to skip said movie.  Which is how I skipped The Tree That Saved Christmas.  But if I had seen it and failed to write it up, I had to re-watch it and post on it.  And, I know I watched a good chunk/ all of Christmas in Rome (2019) just this last Christmas while doing other things.  And then just didn't mention it.  I forgot or something.  

So I put this one off til last and was in no rush to prioritize the movie.

Anyway, this movie stars Chabert and Sam Page, who you may remember as Joan's would-be-doctor husband on Mad Men, a role that I am sure he has mixed feelings about at this juncture.  Page plays a Businessman from New York who is sent to Rome, just before the holidays, to look into acquiring a famed Italian company that handmakes high-end plates and bowls or something.  And because it's Rome, it is also *art*.

Chabert X-Mas Watch: Family For Christmas (2015)

Mirrorverse Man watches Lacey, while she stares you down

Watched:  06/08/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Amanda Tapping

Job: News reporter/ Housewife

Location of story:  San Francisco and Bay Area 'burbs

new skill:  being a mother

Man:  Tyron Leitso

Job of Man:  Advertising creative

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to alternate timeline

Event:  School Christmas Pageant (very overdecorated)

Food:  Mushrooms and what I think was Captain Crunch

In 2015, Lacey Chabert made four movies, three for Hallmark.  Two of those Hallmark movies were Christmas films.  In 2015, she is on her way to building her own legend.

The first Christmas movie selection for 2015 was A Christmas Melody, the Mariah Carey movie, which we previously covered.  

Our selection today was Family for Christmas (2015),  one of the movies in which Santa is not just a jolly old elf making toys - he's a chaos agent who uses his reality-warping powers to wreak havoc with an unsuspecting person, hoping he can make people hook up.  Santa in Hallmark-Land does not care about toys or children, he cares about making strangers decide to make it.  

Santa is a freak.

Previously, Santa gave Chabert "courage"/ "the inability to stop herself from escalating an already bad situation" in A Wish For Christmas.  This time, Santa finds a perfectly happy career gal/ news reporter (Chabert) who gets a friend request from her college sweetheart she dumped to become a successful reporter.  Meanwhile, she's being offered jobs in NYC, getting the most understanding breakup in Hallmark history, and stealing her assistant's ideas for stories.

Apparently Chabert ponders that Friend Request and what could have been with this ex-boyfriend SO HARD, her pondering becomes a Christmas Wish.  One she did not explicitly make, but Santa still says "yeah, but you really wanted to know".  

Chabert X-Mas Watch: The Christmas Waltz (2020)

no idea why dude looks like he's about to abduct Chabert

Watched:  06/07/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First full time through

Director/ Writer:  Michael Damian

Job: Attorney 

Location of story:  Manhattan

new skill:  Waltzing

Man:  Will Kemp

Job of Man:  Dance instructor

Goes to/ Returns to:  It's all in Manhattan

Event:  The Christmas Dance show

Food:  Wedding cake?  

The curious thing about the Will Kemp/ Chabert movies is that (a) Chabert is *not* a classically trained dancer, and (b) Kemp is, like, 9 inches taller than her.  So it's not a traditional ballroom couple.  But it does fulfill some vision of a graceful man taking the audience's stand-in in Chabert and making sure you CAN dance.  And isn't that what it's all about?

The Christmas Waltz (2020) is about power-lawyer Chabert figuring out her perfect life and Christmas wedding are not happening when her absolute shitheel of a fiancé decides to take a promotion and move to Boston less than four weeks before their wedding.  I mean...  honestly, guy.

Chabert has signed them up for dance lessons for their wedding dance, but winds up using the lessons for herself, remembering she loved to dance as a child and walked away from it to lead the perfect life her fiancé just poured gasoline on, and then tossed a match.  

Chabert Not-Hallmark X-Mas Watch: A Holiday Heist (2011)

Watched:  06/06/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christie Will Wolf

So, I thought A Holiday Heist (2011) was going to be a Hallmark movie, but it was not.  It was, instead, one of the weird, trash movies that get made every year in a filmmaking economy I do not understand.  It wasn't A Talking Cat!?! levels of not-giving-a-@#$%, but it was closer to that than it was theater-ready.  It made your typical Hallmark movie look like It's a Wonderful Life by comparison.  I do not know who this was for, where it was shown, who paid for it...  Usually when something is this trash it's called something like "The Dog Who Saved Christmas", but there's no dog in this movie.  They can't afford it.

The filming had to have occurred over, like, two weeks.  There's maybe five locations, and all of the money went to getting hired gun actors with some name recognition to show up, do some schtick, and mostly not be there longer than two or three days.

In this case, it's Vivica A. Fox as the mean Dean of the college and Chris Kattan as a wacky uncle who has nothing to do with anything.  

And... Lacey Chabert as the focal character.  As she does in so many movies, she plays the anchor of the plot.  She is the general-female-protagonist-with-an-artistic-bent, this time a college student skipping Christmas to work in an art gallery (Chabert herself would have been about 28 or 29 when this was filmed).  

Chabert X-Mas Watch: A Christmas Melody (2015)

Watched: 06/04/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  Second?

Director:  Mariah Carey

Job: Unemployed/ diner waitress/ Would-be-Fashion Designer

Location of story:  Silver Falls, Ohio

new skill:  Giving up

Man:  Brennan Elliot

Job of Man:  Elementary School music teacher

Goes to/ Returns to:  Returns to

Event:  Christmas concert/ Snowflake Pageant

Food:  I don't know that they had a food they harped on

The two Queens of Christmas in one forgotten movie!

Chabert stars!  Carey directs?

I'd seen this one during COVID lockdown, but, honestly, I was pretty drunk.  Plus, I blocked out a lot of what I watched during lockdown, so it was kind of like seeing it for the first time.

I re-read my original post on this movie, and I agree with most of it.  It is very fixated on high school and a girl leaving and everyone rubbing it in her face that she had to come home after (checks notes) her husband died and her business failed.  

So, yeah, being a jerk about that seems right.  As we've learned in the last decade, people are the worst.

I also still think the movie is very thin, and that's a screenplay issue, but also I'm surprised I was so surprised by this the first time.  It's kinda par for the course for a Hallmark movie to basically provide a set-up and then people shoot the shit for forty-five minutes, there's a small bit of tension about the two would-be-lovers maybe not getting it on, and then they throw caution and financial security to the wind and go for it.  I'd argue that when there's more to it, that's the outlier. 

But, yeah, it's about Chabert giving up LA to come home where she has what seems like a 2700 sq foot Queen Anne waiting for her in perfect condition.  Her daughter has a gift for singing and poetry, but is sad they've left LA.  

Chabert enrolls her daughter in her old school only to find that her high school nemesis, Mariah Carey, is there and the Queen Bee of the PTA, etc... and a real piece of work.  But Santa works there as the janitor?

Chabert Holiday Watch: A Royal Christmas (2014)

Watched:  06/02/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing: Unknown

Director:  Alex Zamm

Job: Tailor/ Would-be-Fashion Deisgner

Location of story:  vague Europe

new skill: passing for someone allowed in public

Man:  Steven Hagen

Job of Man: Prince

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to

Event:  The Royal Christmas Ball  

Food:  pancakes

I have two more non-Christmas movies to watch as part of ChabertQuest 2025, but just wasn't in the mood for either after a weird couple of weeks around Signal Watch HQ.  So, instead, I went down the list of the Christmas movies I have to get through, and we picked this one.  

While I had not previously written this one up, I am positive I've seen it in parts or in whole as I certainly remembered bits of it, so I am not calling it a First Viewing.  

Wrongly, I believed that A Royal Christmas (2014) was Chabert's first Christmas movie for Hallmark.  It's not.  We'll get to that one.  Nor is it even close to the first basic cable Christmas movie about an unlikely American regular-ol'-girl who sweeps a prince off his feet.  But it does appear to have been the moment Hallmark fully invested in Chabert for Christmas, and ten years later, she basically signed a contract to be the Queen of Hallmark Christmas.

The movie was filmed in Romania, but with American and English talent.  Jane Seymour co-stars, which can't have been inexpensive.  And they have a whole castle, block off city streets, etc...  Maybe it's a huge budget!  Maybe the dollar goes super far in Romania!  I have no idea.

Our basic story is that Chabert is a normal girl with a dream to be a fashion designer.  She works at her dad's tailor shop in Philadelphia and has been dating an MBA student, Leo, for a year.  Leo is to spend Christmas with Chabert and her dad, but Leo is  suddenly summoned home.  Before he departs, she learns Leo is actually Leopold, a legit prince of a small, independent country in the South of France.  A sort of San Marino, I guess.  But it is what SNL would call The Kingdom of Caucasia.  And, so the movie can happen, she goes along.

Chabert Watch: Reach for Me (2008)

Watched:  05/29/2025

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  LeVar Burton

So.  Interesting, small, indie movie with some name talent.  I kept wondering how this was pulled off, and then the movie ended with "Directed by LeVar Burton" and the lightbulb went off.  Who doesn't love LeVar Burton?  And if you don't think he's great, we can't be friends.

And when I say name talent, I mean Chabert, of course.  But also Seymour Cassel, Alfre Woodard, Adrienne Barbeau, Larry Hankin, and Burton himself.  I am not familiar with actor Johnny Whitworth, one of the major leads, but he was good!

The movie is... odd.  It's about Alvin (Seymour Cassel), a patient in hospice who is facing his end.  He loses his roommate (Hankin) who he kind of got along with - but maybe not as well as he believed. Alvin's an old, sad and angry asshole, and a letch who grabs the butts of the volunteers.  He talks about sex like he's in a a dorm trying to impress wide-eyed Freshmen as a Sophomore.  

Chabert Watch: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)

Watched:  05/28/2025

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Waters

When people ask "why did studios stop spending money on romcoms", I think it's fair to point to movies like this and say "well, this is what they were making, and people didn't like it."  Metacritic has this at a 34, which sounds correct.  

I had not seen this movie, and until I looked it up a week ago to watch it, I thought it was a movie in which Eva Longoria was a ghost hassling her boyfriend.  But that was Over Her Dead Body, which people also didn't like.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) is a movie I may have known existed at one point, but...  in 2025, I just had no memory of it coming out.  I don't know if it met expectations or not, making about $100 million worldwide.  

Chabert Watch: Hello Sister, Goodbye Life (2006)

Watched:  05/27/2025

Format:  YouTube TV on demand

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steven Robman

This movie is about a young woman (Chabert, playing a college junior here) with a rocky relationship with her father, who has remarried and has a young daughter (Samantha Hanratty).  When her father and her step-mother die in a car accident, she learns that her father named her custodian of her half-sister.

While attending college, she moves into her father's house and tries to take care of a seven-year-old.  As it turns out, for a hard-partying college girl, this is a change of pace.

Wendie Malick plays Chabert's mother, a woman who also seems like a lot of fun, but who maybe was not a role model for structured parenting, and is more excited to have an adult-aged college daughter she can hang with than she was to raise a young child.

Chabert Watch: Elevator Girl (2010)

Watched:  05/26/2025

Format:  UP free trial on Amazon 

Viewing:  First

Director:  Bradford May

Job:  Massage therapy receptionist, Would-Be Chef, DJ for children and old people, I lost track

new skill:  Landing a dude to fund her boho lifestyle

Man: Ryan Merriman

Job of Man:  Attorney - Mergers and Acquisitions

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in place

Event:  a six-year old's birthday, and others

Food:  No special food, but they do make hummus

So, this is somewhat technically Lacey Chabert's first Hallmark movie.  If you're looking for ground zero for how she eventually became a big deal at Hallmark, she signed up for this movie, which was picked up for distribution through Hallmark (a lot of "Hallmark" movies are not made by Hallmark, but made independently to be purchased by Hallmark.  I don't know all the details.).  

It's now available on UP!, which I learned is still going when I looked for this movie, but I hadn't seen the network in years.

Around this same time, Chabert's career was obviously in an odd patch.  She's having work released, but this is her first release of 2010.  In 2009, she was in the big studio romcom Ghosts of Girlfriends Past starring McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and Michael Douglas, but also The Lost, which we've already covered.  And she's doing a bunch of cartoon voice work - she voiced Gwen Stacy on The Spectacular Spider-Man for 25 episodes.

The description for Elevator Girl (2010) made it sound like it would be about people from two different classes making it work, but it's more like...  two people with nothing in common dating. 

Chabert Watch: A Little Piece of Heaven (1991)

The poster features Cameron realizing he just committed several felonies

Watched:  05/25/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mimi Leder

Holy @#$%.  This movie is unhinged.

The vibe is sort of Hallmark Hall of Fame, with the rural setting and people all deciding everything is going to be swell for Christmas at the end.  It's about Kirk Cameron kidnapping kids and taking them to his pig farm so his adult, developmentally disabled sister will have friends.  In order to keep the kids, he tells them that they've died and his house/ farm is heaven - all evidence to the contrary (for example, you have to live with Kirk Cameron).  Along the way, they become a sort of family, in a way that feels lifted from The Legend of Billie Jean of all movies.

Look, full disclosure:  I can't stand Kirk Cameron.  This started all the way back in his Growing Pains days.  He's a mediocre actor and seemed like a smug jackass even when he was just taking up real estate in Tiger Beat.  But his subsequent weirdo, condescending, "it is I who know the true word of God" routine was thin 30 years ago, and it hasn't improved with the years.  He's just the worst.

So, I was not thrilled to watch this.  

Chabert Watch: When Secrets Kill (1997)

Watched:  05/24/2025

Format:  YouTube - someone posted this a bit and no one took it down

Viewing:  First

Director:  Colin Bucksey

blogger's note: if it seems like I'm blazing through the Chabert movies, I am.  We're getting close with 7 non-Christmas movies left, and then 5 Christmas movies.  It is a journey, y'all.  But it is inspiring me for what I'll do next.  And while I have enjoyed my time with Ms. Chabert, and I have plenty to say on it (which I'll sum up at the end), it also feels like I'm in the home stretch after 62 Chabert movies here since the Christmas season kicked into gear.  

Man, made-for-cable TV movies of the 1990's are buckwild.  It's easy to forget if you haven't seen one in a while.  

When Secrets Kill (1997) is based on a Patricia MacDonald novel, and she's a prolific mystery author who does quite well.  I have no idea how true to the book this is, but it is wacky.  

The version I watched was commercial free and seemed like it was encoded from VHS tape, complete with bad picture and warbly, distorted audio, which made for some tough viewing.   And, of course, the 1990's ever-present synth score.  

I associate 1990's cable flicks with Lifetime Movies, which were such a weird mix of noir and domestic concerns aimed at an imagined audience of women (babysitters stealing babies, babysitters stealing husbands, babysitters stealing babies and husbands.).  And, certainly, a Bio-Mom returning falls into this realm.  But this aired across multiple channels, so I don't know who owned it.

Our plot:  A couple (Gregory Harrison and Roxanne Hart) are mourning a stillbirth of a much-wanted baby.  On Mother's Day, their adopted tween-daughter (Chabert) doesn't show up for brunch, and they head home as Mom doesn't want to celebrate anything.  After a brief fight at home, Chabert's birth mother appears at the door without invitation.  This is, of course, stressful.  

Chabert Watch: Off-Season - The Lex Morrison Story (2013)

Watched:  05/22/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steven K. Tsuchida

I did not have NBA-player Vanity Project down on my Chabert bingo card, but here we are.

Look, I didn't like Rick Fox when he played for the Celtics and rolled my eyes when he went to LA.  I liked him less when he married America's precious angel, Vanessa Williams.  He became dead to me when he divorced Williams.

How dare you, Rick.

So, yeah, I was immediately not excited about this when I realized this movie was about Rick Fox wanting to be in a comedy and throwing money at it until it was a reality.

I have no idea what this movie is.  It looks like a TV movie, but I can't figure out who it's for.  It feels very much like people goofing in front of a camera more than a TV show or movie.  

late edit:  I forgot the casual racism toward Asian people.  It was incredibly yikes and all out of Fox's mouth.

The story is that Our Hero is part of the PR team for an NBA team.  He's assigned to keep an eye on Lex Morrison (Fox) over the summer and get him in shape for the next season.  If he doesn't, he'll be fired.  Lex is, of course, wacky and out of control and not living up to his potential.  We are continually told Lex is in bad shape, but he is Rick Fox.  

Our lead guy, Zack Lively, is probably fine.  But weirdly and wildly bland.  He has a sort of partner-in-crime who is asked to play doofy/zany very, very broadly, and feels like a high school kid doing improv.  

I guess Fox was dating Eliza Dushku when the movie was made, so she's in it as a brief supporting role, and she's honestly the funniest part of the movie.  

There's a subplot about Lacey Chabert as a sports reporter who our lead wants to date.  Chabert does not embarrass herself.  Which I can't say for pretty much everyone else.

The movie was not for me.  But it was short at 75 minutes.  

But it is entertaining seeing them try to frame Rick Fox and Lacey Chabert in the same shot.

Also, this movie seems to be about how much Rick Fox didn't like living in Boston.  It's very weird.

My suspicion is that Rick Fox just thought this idea was good and wanted to have his own Hollywood project (he does appear in TV and movies) and decided he could be in a comedy, so he spent some of his Lakers money and made it.  He has the Executive Producer credit, and it's budgeted at $650K, so he could have easily financed it, especially using his own house as the set for half of the movie, if that is his place.  Write-offs, ahoy.